emember Family Guy? Fifteen-odd years ago, the Seth MacFarlane-created animated sitcom seemed to be everywhere. After The Simpsons had revolutionised the possibilities of TV animation in the 1990s, Family Guy went one step further. This was The Simpsons’ grubby little brother. The animation was cheap-looking, the storytelling flimsy and artless, and the jokes were loudly, proudly crass. Racist jokes, homophobic jokes, transphobic jokes, ablist jokes, jokes about rape, about paedophilia; nothing was off the table. It won plenty of fans – especially within the young male demographic – but plenty of detractors, too, inciting numerous controversies with its shock-factor material. In many ways, Family Guy represented the worst impulses of an era when pushing back against “PC culture” was considered a cutting-edge comic sensibility.
But there comes a time when every provocateur must meet a reckoning, when every enfant terrible must face trial as a terrible adult. The needle of consensus swings, and jokes that once were hailed as edgy, or outspoken, are found to be, on closer reinspection, offensive, or ill-informed, or simply unfunny. Some series get off with a rap on the knuckles – Friends’ penchant for homophobia hasn’t put a dent in its popularity – while others have been yeeted into total exile, such as Family Guy’s erstwhile bad-taste contemporary Little Britain. And yet, next Wednesday, on Disney Plus in the UK, Family Guy begins its 20th season, with a 21st already in the pipeline. You can’t help but ask: how has it managed to survive so long in an era of supposedly enforced political correctness?
Well, to some extent, Family Guy has changed with the times, making certain concessions to our changing social standards of acceptability. The role of Peter Griffin’s Black friend Cleveland Brown was recently recast, for instance, with Arif Zahir stepping in to replace white actor Mike Henry. The character of Quagmire, depicted throughout much of the show’s run as a lascivious sex offender, was tweaked in recent seasons, accentuating his other, somewhat less problematic characteristics. The 2019 episode “Trump Guy” made headlines not just for its bullish attack on then-president Donald Trump – featuring a scene in which he sexually assaults the Griffins’ daughter, Meg – but also for the suggestion that it was dialling back homophobic jokes. “Many children have learnt their favourite Jewish, Black, and gay jokes by watching your show over the years,” the cartoon Trump tells Peter in the episode. “In fairness, we’ve been trying to phase out the gay stuff,” he replies, an utterance that was celebrated in the press as a statement of tolerant intent.
